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Within less than a week, America endured for only the third time in our storied history the impeachment and acquittal of a president while witnessing for the first time a senator from the president’s own political party voting to convict him.

During the same week, the Democratic Iowa Caucus results were delayed due a faulty app that failed to record the tallies, begging the question: Where are the Russians when you need them?

In a time when people lack confidence and trust in government, the party of big government — the Democrats — could not deliver timely results to their own caucuses. However, that is a column for another day.

If that was not enough political steroids for the week, there was Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, ripping up the president’s State of the Union address live on national TV. It had to be painful for leftists watching Pelosi publicly unravel.

Who knew the side effects of Botox were so vexing?

If we are being honest with ourselves, impeachment was a near certainty even before President Trump took office since the collective psychosis was already taking hold and went into overdrive once Trump defeated the ordained pre-election winner, Hillary Clinton.

What the left was not counting on was that no one bothered to watch the impeachment proceedings, knowing it was a complete charade. Like the economy, the stock market went about its business of growth, not giving it a second thought.

Who knew impeachment would turn into one big Schiff show?

Despite President Trump’s acquittal, the impeachment’s aftershocks will reverberate for a generation and perhaps beyond. Being it was only the third time such an event has taken place and having been alive for two of them, this unique occurrence may, in the future, be anything but.

Republicans defended the president’s right to resist congressional oversight, a precedent that will not be ignored in any future impeachment. The effects will swell throughout our national politics. The bureaucratic Washington, D.C., swamp could very well make impeachment the standard political hammer of the future because they are its political feed mill.

It will also leave its mark on the ongoing issue of presidential power that has shifted toward the executive branch. This transferal of power has been on a steady course for nearly a generation and conservatives have no one to blame but themselves. It has also served to deepen the division and the disparity between Republicans and Democrats.

Nonetheless, it does not have to be that way.

The after effects of impeachment theater could be used to stage a way for both parties to find some common ground issues where lawmakers can agree, like the nation’s weakening infrastructure.

The media, which has been the third wheel of the Democratic tricycle, owns a piece of this, too, because in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial, the president signed a new U.S. Mexico-Canada trade agreement. This needed legislation was arguably the most important bipartisan accomplishment of Trump’s three-year tenure. Yet, the news coverage was practically nonexistent and only fuels the great American political divide.

There are some who believe that the impeachment trial will leave moderate Republicans vulnerable this November. Impeachment fallout is by no means an exact science, because, in 1998, when Bill Clinton was impeached, Republicans were united as Democrats were this time and yet they still lost ground. History could bestow the same fate on Democrats this November, and that includes the presidency.

The most recent Gallup poll revealed that Trump’s approval rating is at its highest level to date, while a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has his approval among independent voters higher than ever.

Straight out of the Twilight Zone was how Democrats repeatedly insisted that our Founding Fathers would have approved of their impeachment. This coming from a party which continues to devote so much time and effort into trying to undo the work of the founders, in particular our Constitution’s first two amendments.

The founders, with their impassive appraisal of human nature, brought forth a constitutional system more than two centuries ago that remains robust enough to withstand political heresy and render an injustice that will permit the voters to decide come November’s presidential election as intended.

(Maresca, a Brooklyn native and former Marine, resides in eastern Northumberland County)

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